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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Biomathematics ((LNBM,volume 4))

Abstract

For a long time it has been recognized that the eye is very sensitive, and almost as soon as it was realized that light is absorbed in discrete quanta it was suggested that the resulting limits to performance might be important in vision. The measurements made in the 1940’s by Hecht and his colleagues at Columbia, NYC, and by Bouman and Van der Velden in Holland, showed that this was indeed the case. The experiments are well known, but they are important and provide the basis for much of what has followed, so I shall describe them in some detail.

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Selected References

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© 1974 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg

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Barlow, H.B. (1974). Visual Sensitivity. In: Conrad, M., Güttinger, W., Dal Cin, M. (eds) Physics and Mathematics of the Nervous System. Lecture Notes in Biomathematics, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-80885-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-80885-2_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-07014-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-80885-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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